<?php
/**
 * <https://y.st./>
 * Copyright © 2019 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>
 * 
 * This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
 * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 * the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
 * (at your option) any later version.
 * 
 * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
 * GNU General Public License for more details.
 * 
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 * along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org./licenses/>.
**/

$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Expanding my known world',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2019/05/09.jpg" alt="A path curving under a bridge" class="framed-centred-image" width="800" height="480"/>
<section id="mobile">
	<h2>Fixing the mobile</h2>
	<p>
		I couldn&apos;t get to sleep last night, thinking about my mobile&apos;s issues, so I stayed up past midnight looking for a fix.
		Eventually, I <a href="https://redmine.replicant.us/boards/3/topics/14331">found one</a>.
		The fix seemed to apply successfully, but the mobile still thought the internal &quot;$a[SD] card&quot; was corrupt, so I rebooted to see if that would help.
		If did.
		Open Camera still couldn&apos;t save photographs taken though.
		This was no longer an issue with the main $a[OS], as far as I could tell, so I started looking for Open-Camera-specific fixes.
		I found a <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/opencamera/tickets/61/">bug report about Open Camera failing to save photos when the save location was set to be somewhere on the external $a[SD] card</a>.
		What?
		I was using default settings at that point.
		More importantly though, it said Open Camera was set to save images in a particular location.
		That&apos;s actually configurable!
		I couldn&apos;t find that setting last night when I looked for it, so I assumed it not to be there.
		I looked harder this morning, and found the setting.
		Here&apos;s the odd part though: I set the save location to what it already was set to, and that got it working.
		So now, the camera works.
		I checked $a[MTP] too, and that works properly as well, allowing me to access both the actual $a[SD] card and the internal &quot;$a[SD] card&quot;.
		Again, this is outright bizarre, seeing as even though the mobile recognised the actual $a[SD] card as soon as I allowed it to format the filesystem, it still wouldn&apos;t allow me to access the actual $a[SD] card via $a[MTP].
		Fixing the broken internal &quot;$a[SD] card&quot; restored access not only to the broken filesystem, but also the filesystem I should have had access to all along.
	</p>
	<p>
		I went to bed thinking that the only issue left to resolve was the actual $a[SD] card&apos;s filesystem.
		It&apos;s currently formatted using a bogus filesystem - probably $a[exFAT] - and isn&apos;t going to allow a decent character set for use in file names.
		It&apos;s a problem I&apos;d deal with later though.
		For now, at least I had my camera back online for today&apos;s journal entry photograph.
	</p>
	<p>
		When I woke up though, I found my mobile discharged to 11%.
		And here&apos;s the thing: I left it plugged in all night!
		I unplugged the device and plugged it back in; it discharged to 10%.
		Right away, I repeated, and it discharged to 9%.
		That&apos;s some quick battery-draining!
		Repeating a third time didn&apos;t cost me another percent, but I shut the thing off to charge it while powered down.
		Hopefully I&apos;d get enough battery life out of the thing to get my photo for the day if I could just get it charged, then leave it powered off until I was about to take the photo.
		No such luck.
		I checked on it in about forty-five minutes, after I&apos;d had breakfast, showered, and shaved, and found the device completely discharged.
		Even when powered off, it was losing power quicker than it could take it in.
		The thing was completely out of commission again.
		I hoped that when the new battery arrive in the mail, it fixes the problem.
		Otherwise, I wouldn&apos;t have my mobile next term, when I plan to take a course on mobile application development.
		I might have to rework my plan and choose a different course.
	</p>
	<p>
		But then it dawned on me.
		Course registration is in three days.
		If I didn&apos;t have the problem solved by then, I&apos;d need to choose a different course regardless of whether the battery would help, as I wouldn&apos;t be able to know for sure in time.
	</p>
	<p>
		I tried removing the battery, putting it back in, then plugging the device into my laptop instead of the wall.
		The charging icon had been displaying when I plugged it into the wall, so the outlet wasn&apos;t dead, and the power from the wall should have been stronger than that coming from my laptop, but I tried it just in case it&apos;d make s difference.
		Something made a difference.
		The most-logical guess would be that removing the did the trick.
		I moved the device back to the wall outlet, while powered on, to see if it&apos;d continue discharging way too quickly.
		This time, even with the screen on while I checked a few things, the battery level went up a percent.
		Perfect.
		It seems to be working better now.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="diet">
	<h2>Dietary intake</h2>
	<p>
		For breakfast, I had 321 grams of the stew stew from yesterday, made from soy milk, the last of my celery, carrots, quinoa, corn, and dairy-free cheese.
		I didn&apos;t have time for lunch before I headed to the dietary meeting, so I snacked on 125 grams of pretzels and 114 grams of mixed juice, then rushed to the meeting.
		After the meeting, I headed to the Eugene branch of my favourite café, hoping to pick up a recipe book there.
		The book turned out not to have the one and only recipe I was getting it for, so I didn&apos;t buy that, but I did get an actual lunch there.
		I had what is probably my favourite sandwich, but only ate half of it, saving the other half for dinner.
		I intended to save half of the fries that came with it too, but I didn&apos;t have enough restraint.
		I after the other half for dinner with a single cookie and a 0.65-litre vitamin water slushy.
		I think I&apos;m going to try avoiding the 1.2-litre slushies at least for a while.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="rings">
	<h2>Skull ring</h2>
	<p>
		I mentioned wanting some skull rings yesterday.
		I didn&apos;t think I&apos;d be getting either of them so soon, but I&apos;m sort of on a mailing list because they offered to put me into a drawing if I gave them my email address.
		I knew I wouldn&apos;t win, but I figured it couldn&apos;t hurt to try.
		This morning, they sent me a letter saying they&apos;d throw in a gratis ring if I ordered today, so I bought one of the rings I&apos;ve been looking at.
		They gave me an <a href="http://skulljewelry.com?rfsn=2670638.b4e080">affiliate link</a>, too.
		If you order via that link, you can save ten percent on your order.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="religion">
	<h2>Religious study</h2>
	<p>
		The missionaries asked about my notes on the baptism on Saturday.
		So that&apos;s what we talked about.
		They probably think they went through everything I had to say, bet we didn&apos;t even make a dent.
	</p>
	<p>
		First, I asked about how baptism was supposedly necessary for entering into heaven, but how supposedly everyone on earth is going to heaven.
		As long as one person on earth doesn&apos;t get baptised, these are contradictory beliefs.
		It turns out it&apos;s another case of words being misused.
		To get into the celestial kingdom, the highest of the three heavens, you need to be baptised.
		However, you don&apos;t need to be baptised to get to the other two.
		So either all three shouldn&apos;t be called heaven or it shouldn&apos;t be stated that baptism is a requirement to get into heaven.
	</p>
	<p>
		Next, I asked about what it means to take on the name of Jesus.
		It was said at the baptism that one of the promises one makes via baptism is to take on his name.
		Yet you don&apos;t ask people to actually call you Jesus, unless that&apos;s you&apos;re actual name, which is the case for some Mexicans.
		It turns out you&apos;re promising to represent him.
	</p>
	<p>
		I forget how it came to this topic, but it was said that the reason Jesus had to suffer for us was that he needed to understand on a physical level what it is we go through.
		To do that, he had to actually experience it.
		I guess he&apos;s not all-knowing after all.
		I mean, he probably kind of knew, but to actually understand, he had to go through it.
		I guess that means Elohim probably can&apos;t empathise with us, which is why he needs Jesus to act as a mediator between he and us.
	</p>
	<p>
		We discussed the atonement a bit.
		It turns out that Gethsemane, the place Jesus took on all the pains of the world, was an olive orchard.
		Also, the word &quot;gethsemane&quot; means &quot;olive press&quot; in Aramaic.
		Apparently, olive oil is sacred to Christians, and used to anoint people.
		The process of pressing olives to get the pure oil therefore makes the name of the orchard symbolic.
		In my mind though, it further calls the validity of the story into question.
		I mean, in a story, you can add as much symbology as you want, but that sort of coincidence doesn&apos;t happen much in the real world.
		That means one of three things is likely the case: the story is just a story and not actually true, the orchard wasn&apos;t actually named that and/or the place the atonement happened in wasn&apos;t even an olive orchard, or the powers that be (that is, Jesus) set up events to make sure such a place would exist and would be named that before he took on flesh (in other words, it&apos;s not actually a coincidence).
		Also, apparently, no mortal could have survived the atonement.
		The only reason Jesus was able to was because Elohim was his earthly father, giving him greater resilience than the rest of us.
		The only way for Jesus to die was for him to let himself die.
		In other words, Jesus was different than us.
		One of the things they told me before was that Jesus was just like us, except that he was perfect spiritually.
		This simply isn&apos;t the case, it seems.
		Expecting us to live up to this standard just isn&apos;t reasonable.
	</p>
	<p>
		Apparently, perfection isn&apos;t required to enter the celestial kingdom.
		Instead, it&apos;s something that can only be achieved once you&apos;re in the celestial kingdom.
		So if you don&apos;t make it there, you can never be perfect.
		Also, you aren&apos;t cleansed of your imperfections.
		Instead, it&apos;s a learning and growing process.
		That makes getting there much less negative than I&apos;d been led to believe.
		You&apos;re not destroyed, and someone new created out of your good parts.
	</p>
	<p>
		Probably the most important think the missionaries taught me today was that in their religion, everything actually already existed before it was &quot;created&quot;.
		Elohim didn&apos;t create things out of nothing, but created things like how a sculptor or architect would: out of existing materials.
		Even our souls were like this.
		Apparently, we existed in some sort of disorganised form as &quot;intelligences&quot;, and Elohim organised us into souls, which was when we began to actually have personalities.
		This really calls into question whether what he did to create us was justifiable.
		I mean, if he created us from nothing, then no, creating us wasn&apos;t okay.
		He had no right to force us to exist.
		But if we existed already, it could be the case that he brought us into a better form.
		So the question really is whether we&apos;re better off this way or not.
		Are we better off with personalities, thinking and feeling?
		I&apos;m not really sure.
		After thinking for a bit though, something dawned on me.
		I&apos;ve been repeatedly making the assertion that if an all-knowing and all-powerful deity created us from nothing, he necessarily decided everything we&apos;d do from the beginning.
		This is because everything is caused by the moment just before, so there&apos;s only one way that things can play out.
		If you can create souls in with whatever starting variables as you choose and you know what the effect of each variable will be down the line, you&apos;re choosing what will happen by choosing the starting variables.
		But it sounds like he didn&apos;t choose the starting variables.
		He shaped us into the things we are now, but he didn&apos;t actually choose what we&apos;re made of.
		He didn&apos;t create our individuality.
		He didn&apos;t choose our wills, and only partly chose our actions (by choosing the forms we take and the conditions we&apos;d be placed in).
	</p>
	<p>
		The missionaries told me not to worry about all that though.
		They say it doesn&apos;t matter why Elohim does what he does, though I gave them a very good analogy explaining why it does in fact matter.
		Say you&apos;re told that someone cut off the arm of another.
		In that case, context can change what was happening drastically!
		You could be dealing with an axe murderer, but maybe it was actually a medical doctor, and the person had some incurable infection in their arm and it was spreading.
		Maybe cutting off the arm before it spread to the person&apos;s core was the only way to save the rest of them using the medical techniques currently available.
		It&apos;s exceedingly clear that Elohim is doing horrible things, just like in the example of chopping off arms.
		The question them becomes one of motives.
		Unless we know Elohim&apos;s motives, we can&apos;t justify his actions, and have to assume that his actions are just as bad as they sound.
	</p>
	<p>
		But anyway, I think I got a little sidetracked there.
		The point is that they want me to focus on Jesus instead of Elohim.
		Jesus acts on behalf of Elohim, so I&apos;ve been focussing on Elohim, as he&apos;s the one actually calling the shot&apos;s.
		By understanding him, we understand the rest of the system.
		But they say that because Jesus acts on behalf of Elohim, we can understand Elohim through understanding Jesus.
		I think this is backwards, but I didn&apos;t argue.
		Focussing on Jesus is easier for the time being anyway, because the Mormons believe Yahweh is Jesus, and the bible focuses on Yahweh in the first half and Jesus in the second, from what I gather.
		So as I work my way through the bible, focussing on these two, which the Mormons believe are one, is the easiest option.
		I can get back to Elohim when he comes up in their sect-specific scriptures.
		The missionaries also say that a desire to follow Jesus, regardless of any covenants or blessings he might offer, should come first.
		I suppose I like that attitude.
		It shouldn&apos;t be about what he can do for you.
		It should be about whether he&apos;s someone you&apos;d want to side with.
		I mean first, you shouldn&apos;t side with the fictional, so before following him, you should have some sort of evidence that he&apos;s real.
		An secondly, you should find out what sort of person he is and decide whether he deserves your loyalty.
		It shouldn&apos;t be about what he&apos;ll do for you if you follow or do to you if you don&apos;t.
	</p>
	<p>
		Finally, the missionaries discussed something called the unpardonable sin.
		If the Holy Ghost makes something plain to you and you consciously decide to deny what he said you you, it&apos;s unforgivable.
		They said it doesn&apos;t happen often.
		I think they said there have been two recorded cases of it.
		It&apos;s honestly not hard to avoid that sin, like they said though.
		If the Holy Ghost were to actually make something plain to you, he&apos;d have to first make his <strong>*existence*</strong> plain to you, which he doesn&apos;t do often.
		This makes the sin nearly impossible to commit.
		But then, if he did manifest to you, you don&apos;t have to deny what he said, just explain how you disagree with it.
		That is, <strong>*if*</strong> you disagree with it.
		After all, he could very well be telling you undeniable truths or could be giving you wise plans of action.
		My understanding is that the Holy Ghost doesn&apos;t tend to come up with things on his own, but rather acts as a messenger.
		Saying that the Holy Ghost told you that Jesus wants you to do X would be to not deny what the Holy Ghost had told you, while still leaving you free to say that play X is actually rather horrible, assuming that it is.
	</p>
	<p>
		Oh.
		Yeah.
		The missionaries are now pushing baptism again.
		I think their notes on me from the previous missionaries, which are a thing they probably have, keep them from trying to pull the wool over my eyes on me again.
		The last missionaries to try that wanted me to schedule a baptism without explaining the consequences.
		These ones only asked if baptism would be something I&apos;d be open to.
		I explained the scripture telling me I shouldn&apos;t rush into it, and should instead be convinced of the truth of their religion before baptism, not after.
		Because of the wording of how the rest of the conversation had gone, I did say I&apos;d do it if I was able to achieve a relationship with Jesus, which is something they&apos;d said was nice to have, and if he was actually the sort of person worth following.
		Of course, a relationship with him requires his existence, and I&apos;ve yet to actually see any evidence of this.
		And now as I write this, it occurs to me that it&apos;s difficult to have a relationship with someone that won&apos;t talk to you.
		Jesus doesn&apos;t talk to many people, instead sending the Holy Ghost in his place.
		And we&apos;re supposed to address our prayers to Elohim, so we&apos;re not really talking to Jesus either, even if Jesus is listening in and it&apos;s Jesus that acts on the prayers.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="faire">
	<h2>Street faire</h2>
	<p>
		On the way to the dietary meeting, I got slowed down by an unexpected street faire, with densely-packed people walking around and impeding traffic.
		I thought I was late to leave home, as the missionaries arrived and left late, but it turns out I had plenty of time to deal with the several blocks of congestion.
		I still didn&apos;t have time to stop though; it&apos;s doubtful they&apos;d have anything I wanted, but it would have been interesting to take a look at the wares.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="dietary">
	<h2>Dietary meeting</h2>
	<p>
		The dietician accepted the survey I handed in, not attached to the contract I&apos;d removed.
		They didn&apos;t seem to notice the missing contract.
		Other people had forgotten their surveys an contracts though, so the dietician said it was fine and spread the workload, as they have to manually enter the information from the surveys (ostensibly into a computer system) by hand.
		So they might notice when they enter my survey information, and if they do, they might or might not remember to bring it up at the next meeting.
		We&apos;ll see/
	</p>
	<p>
		This time, we dietician had us reintroduce ourselves and tell our favourite foods.
		Blueberries, halibut, mangos and artichokes, and ... I don&apos;t remember the other person&apos;s response.
		I didn&apos;t take notes on what foods people chose, as favourite foods just aren&apos;t as interesting as what we introduced ourselves with last time, which is what motivated us to register for the course.
	</p>
	<p>
		The dietician said that the biggest predictor of success in an endeavour in monitoring.
		I think I sort of already knew that, on some levels.
		Well, maybe not.
		It&apos;s not that I knew that monitoring was the biggest predictor, it&apos;s more that I knew that monitoring is highly effective for me personally.
		That&apos;s why my goal set last meeting was to record my dietary intake.
		No one will be able to read my logs for several years, but my logs still hold me accountable to myself.
		And over the past couple weeks, I&apos;ve seen it work, boosting my confidence in self-monitoring.
		I&apos;ve held back and not eaten as much, or even not eaten at all, just because I didn&apos;t want to have to admit to my journal and myself that I&apos;d eaten.
		One of the other participants brought up planning, and the dietician agreed that planning is a very powerful tool, though not as effective as monitoring.
		Using the two together works quite well though.
		And if your plan is detailed enough, it can mostly act as the monitoring too, without much further efforts.
		You can just check off items in the plan and call it good.
		When things don&apos;t end up going exactly according to plan, you can also adjust what was written in the plan when using it as the monitoring tool, so what actually happened does get recorded.
		I just sort of took for granted at the time that a plan&apos;s write-up can be easily modified, but this actually depends entirely on the format the plan is in.
		Everything important I write (and quite a bit of unimportant stuff I write as well) is digital, so insertions and deletions are a piece of cake.
		For people using a pen and paper though, this isn&apos;t as easy of a prospect though.
	</p>
	<p>
		It was also said that behavioural change has to be worth the effort put in.
		And there will be effort.
		When changes aren&apos;t worth the effort, we give up on them.
		The dietician asked us why obesity is such a widespread problem.
		I forget whether they asked why it was so widespread in this country or just so widespread in general.
		I was quick to point out a major flaw in our country&apos;s society though.
		Here in the United States, fast food and healthy food are pretty much mutually exclusive.
		People are in a rush and don&apos;t have time to wait for food, so they eat what&apos;s available.
		I compared this to Japanese society.
		In Japan, the convenience stores and fast food restaurants sell actual, decent food.
		You can walk into a convenience store and buy something somewhat healthy instead of utter garbage.
		Is it the healthiest?
		Probably not.
		These aren&apos;t health food stores by any means.
		But it&apos;s not potato chips and pizza.
		It&apos;s not greasy trash.
		The dietician pointed out our sedentary lifestyle, too.
		I&apos;m less inclined to believe that&apos;s the main problem though on a couple levels.
		Fist of all, I think much of the modern first world leads lives that are more sedentary than they really should be.
		Yet my country&apos;s the fat one.
		And secondly, I bike everywhere I go.
		Sure, I sit in front of a computer most days doing coursework, but I bike to work and back five days a week, do heavy lifting and a lot of walking at work, run all my errands by bike, and bike twenty-six kilometres round trip to get to my $a[EUGLUG] meeting each week.
		I don&apos;t work out.
		I don&apos;t have time to work out.
		But if I need much more exercise than I&apos;m getting, my body just isn&apos;t a good fit for the modern world in any sense, and my evolution was just flawed.
		I mean, even more flawed than I already know it to be.
		The largest person in the group also mentioned how they were splitting wood earlier in the day, and that takes quite a bit of effort as well.
		I imagine they weren&apos;t just randomly splitting wood today, either; this is probably something they do fairly regularly.
	</p>
	<p>
		Next, we covered what a syndrome is.
		It&apos;s defined as a package of characteristics or a cluster of symptoms.
		In other words, it&apos;s a useful label for when we can&apos;t see an underlying disease, but the symptoms are pointing at something we wish to have a word to identify.
		With that in mind, we discussed metabolic syndrome.
		It can lead to diabetes in seven to ten years.
		You&apos;re said to have this syndrome if you experience any three or more of the following five symptoms:
	</p>
	<ul>
		<li>
			A large waistline
		</li>
		<li>
			A high triglyceride level
		</li>
		<li>
			A low High-density lipoprotein level
		</li>
		<li>
			A high blood pressure
		</li>
		<li>
			A high fasting blood sugar
		</li>
	</ul>
	<p>
		Blood sugar should be somewhere from eighty to one hundred twenty milligrams per decilitre at all times.
		When fasting, it should be under one hundred.
		The dietician also pointed out that pre-diabetes is reversible, but diabetes itself is not.
	</p>
	<p>
		The dietician pointed out that pre-printed diets tend not to work over time.
		You just can&apos;t stick with them forever.
		If we&apos;re trying to slim down, it&apos;s more important that we eat smaller proportions than that we eat healthy food.
		As the dietician pointed out, you could eat a tonne of healthy food and it&apos; have more calories than a tiny amount of unhealthy food.
		Cutting down is more important than eliminating specific things from one&apos;s diet.
		I would argue that cutting out specific foods can still be beneficial.
		You just can&apos;t overdo it and eliminate everything, because you won&apos;t be able to stick with all the restrictions.
		But for example, I&apos;ve eliminated potato chips from my diet.
		And honestly, I think that helped.
		But there&apos;s a boat load of things I didn&apos;t eliminate, so I don&apos;t feel overly confined by the potato chip restriction, and can stick with it.
		I agree with the dietician though that proportion control is still vital, even when eliminating a few specific bad foods.
		You&apos;ve still got to keep the other foods you eat down to a lower level than you&apos;re used to.
	</p>
	<p>
		We covered how having a plan of success would help.
		It should include affirmations, a positive mindset, and self-talk.
		As far as self-talk, I already talk to myself far more than I probably should.
		I think I&apos;ve got that one covered.
		I&apos;ve also been working on my positive mindset since the last meeting.
		I&apos;m pretty sure we talked about positivity then, too.
		I&apos;m not sure if my attempts at forced positivity have had had any effect, but I&apos;ve felt more in control since I started tracking my eating habits, and that had brought me actual positivity.
		I&apos;m really not good at affirmations though.
		I&apos;ve been working on those a tiny bit, but there&apos;s no way I&apos;ll get anywhere if I try to force the kind of mindset of self-affirmations all at once.
		That one&apos;s going to have to come slowly, if at all.
	</p>
	<p>
		It was mentioned again that we shouldn&apos;t skip meals.
		Skipping meals leads to wanting pretty big meals later.
		Calorie restriction is required to lose weight.
		One of the participants asked about the keto diet.
		The dietician said that the keto diet can in fact lead to weight loss due to a calorie deficit.
		I didn&apos;t understand where this deficit was coming from, due to the fact that the dietician said that fat has a lot more calories than carbohydrates, and that the keto diet reduces carb intake and increases fat intake.
		They said carbs and protein each have four calories per gram, while fat has nine calories per gram.
		It doesn&apos;t matter anyway though.
		They also brought up how the keto diet can cause gout and kidney stones.
		They also said it was difficult to have a social life on the keto diet, due to much socialising involving food and keto food options not being available in most places you&apos;d hang out with people.
		Honestly, it seems like all you&apos;d need to do is bring your own food, but many people wouldn&apos;t want to do that.
	</p>
	<p>
		We were presented with a set of equations used to calculate our calorie needs.
		This would tell us the amount of calories we&apos;d need daily to take in just to stay how we already are.
		It was recommended that if we use the equation, we keep our calorie intake at two hundred fifty below that amount, and also get in plenty of exercise, thus creating a calorie deficit so our bodies would have to burn our fatty reserves.
		It was also said though that counting calories usually doesn&apos;t work though, as it&apos;s tedious and difficult.
		I&apos;d have to agree with that.
		There&apos;s no way I&apos;ll find the time and energy to keep track of calorie intake.
		With or without counting calories, it was recommended that we partake in physical activity no less than every other day.
		As I mentioned before, I&apos;ve already got that covered.
		I bike six days a week at a minimum, with one of those days involving over two hours worth of riding time.
		We were also shown a &quot;rate your plate&quot; method of determining how good a meal is for weight loss.
		Again though, it was tedious, and the dietician admitted that it&apos;s not a tool many people would make use of.
	</p>
	<p>
		We discussed the Mediterranean diet, though it seemed like we covered it just to show why it doesn&apos;t work so we wouldn&apos;t fall for it.
		It involves frequencies at which you&apos;re allowed to eat various things, but the problem is that no proportions are given, making the diet useless.
		Some things, you can only eat once per week, for example.
		But when you eat them, you can eat as much as you like.
	</p>
	<p>
		It was said that we should try to make small and easy changes, not do something difficult and complicated that we can&apos;t maintain.
		For long-term results, we&apos;ve got to actually continue our efforts, so we need to make sure our efforts are spent on something we <strong>*can*</strong> keep doing.
		Otherwise, our efforts are wasted.
		It was also said we should have three meals per day, or two meals and a snack.
		We shouldn&apos;t eat less frequently than that, both to avoid lowering our metabolisms and to avoid wanting huge meals later.
		We also discussed something called the plate method.
		You fill half your plate with non-starchy vegetable; one quarter with starchy vegetables, grains, and/or beans, and one quarter with meat or meat substitutes.
		It was also mentioned that family-style dinners, where you sit around and talk, are helpful because you eat slower.
		However, a better (for my current life as a single) alternative is to just set food out on the counter, take a few bites, then walk off.
		You get some stuff done, then come back and have a few more bites, and repeat the process.
		This could really work well for me, especially on busy days.
		Even if I&apos;m just busy with coursework, I could put the food in the other room so I have to get up to go eat.
		I won&apos;t just eat as I work and not pay attention to how much I&apos;m eating.
	</p>
	<p>
		We looked at a list of low-calorie fruits and vegetables, and were asked to go down the list, checking off ones we&apos;d be likely to eat plenty of.
		Mainly, I think that was to make sure we actually read the list.
		Quite surprisingly, I found &quot;tomato-based beverages&quot; on the list.
		What possible beverages are tomato-based?
		The only thing this could possibly refer to in my mind is tomato juice, as well as potentially mixed juice that&apos;s mostly tomatoes.
		I&apos;ve been drastically cutting down on my mixed juice intake, as we were told that juice is problematic last time.
		It&apos;s too easy to drink quickly, while eating actual fruits is slow, so you don&apos;t eat as much.
		I figured that when the last of my mostly-tomato juice reserves depleted, I&apos;d try to avoid buying it as often.
		I&apos;d still have it sometimes, but just drinking less at each sitting wouldn&apos;t be enough.
		I&apos;d need to have it at fewer sittings.
		It appears that won&apos;t be the case.
		The lime juice I&apos;ve been mixing it with claims to have zero calories, so I won&apos;t even need to change the composition of my juice mix.
		I mean, surely the label is rounding down and there&apos;s <strong>*some*</strong> calories in it, but it&apos;s probably very few.
		The drastic reduction I&apos;ve had in juice intake should be sufficient.
	</p>
	<p>
		Apparently, weight loss slows after about three to four months of progress.
		In six months, your weights stabilises and you stop losing weight.
		To loose weight again, you need to make changes again.
		We were recommended to think about snacks as being tied in with physical activity.
		You shouldn&apos;t snack on days you&apos;ll be laying around all day.
	</p>
	<p>
		Another point made was that we shouldn&apos;t eat the last of something to avoid wasting it.
		Overeating is itself waste.
		That really hit me hard.
		Yeah.
		That is a waste.
		And a worse kind of waste.
		It was instead recommended that we put small scraps like that into little boxes to save for later.
	</p>
	<p>
		My goal set at the end of the meeting was going to be to plan all my meals.
		However, the dietician had me change it to only making sure to plan dinners.
		I don&apos;t see that going well.
		It lets me off the hook too much.
	</p>
	<p>
		After the meeting, I stopped by the Eugene branch of my favourite café.
		I thought I remembered that they had a cookbook containing the recipe for their delicious dairy-free cheese sauce.
		Either I remembered wrong, the employee that told me it was in there before was wrong, or the employee I spoke to today was wrong.
		In any case, they said it wasn&apos;t in there.
		Well screw that then.
		I&apos;m not buying a cookbook that uses non-metric measurements for just any old recipes.
		I thought I remembered that that recipe was the only thing in the book that made me ever contemplate getting it though, and I&apos;ve been thinking about it on and off for a while.
		While I was there though, I grabbed lunch, and saved part of it, planning to have it for dinner.
		I also noticed a sign saying that the Springfield branch is now open for dinner.
		Nice!
		They&apos;ve only been open for lunch until now.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="mobile">
	<h2>Mobile</h2>
	<p>
		I forget how it came up, but one of the people in the group dietary meeting today told me that the computer-recycling place in Eugene repairs mobile devices.
		That&apos;s good to know.
		Assuming it&apos;s true.
		It probably is, but it wouldn&apos;t surprise me if it wasn&apos;t.
		My current problem, aside from the bogus filesystem on the $a[SD] card, likely stems from the cracked battery.
		I should wait until the replacement arrives in the mail before trying anything else.
		But if I have further problems, I should go check out the recycling centre and see if they can help.
	</p>
	<p>
		While I was (kind of) in the area and had nothing pressing to do, I stopped by the mall to check on mobile plans.
		The cable company sent me an advertisement telling me for the umpteenth time about their mobile plans, so I dropped by their shop to see whose towers they sell service off of.
		It&apos;s one of the $a[CDMA] carriers.
		Well that&apos;s not going to work then.
	</p>
	<p>
		I also stopped by an {$a['AT&T']} booth in the mall.
		The likelihood of my choosing them was astronomically small, due partly to the fact that they&apos;re a terrible company, partly to the fact that they&apos;re known for overcharging and I&apos;d already found an excellent deal at T-Mobile, and partly to the fact that I&apos;d have to bike all the way out to Eugene to pay my bill every month, which I thought at the time would be a pain.
		In retrospect, that last reason was terrible, seeing as I&apos;d just need to build that errand into one of my $a[EUGLUG] trips, as I pass by that mall every single week.
		Their prices were predictably expensive.
		I forgot to specify that I was looking for a prepaid plan though, as I always forget that postpaid plans even exist.
		I mean, who would be stupid enough to get a postpaid plan?
		So after getting the price of their low-end plan, I asked if it was prepaid or postpaid.
		I was told it was postpaid, but that if I wanted to, I could go prepaid, but the price would be different.
		It turns out that it&apos;d be two thirds of the price and get me over five times as much data allowance.
		Seriously?
		You didn&apos;t think to offer that plan from the get-go?
	</p>
	<p>
		As a side note, they asked if I need a home Internet connection.
		It&apos;d be nice to have a third option apart from who are supposedly the only two companies to service my complex, both of which rip customers off with the plans they offer.
		They try to get you to sign a noxious term agreement, and if you refuse, they charge you higher rates.
		It turns out that {$a['AT&T']} sells service through other providers, and do service my home through one of those $a[ISP]s.
		However, there&apos;s a catch.
		They refuse to sell you Internet service unless it&apos;s bundled with television service.
		Don&apos;t want television service?
		Then you can&apos;t get Internet service through {$a['AT&T']}, at least not in my area.
		I pointed out to the employee that their company is probably costing themselves sales with that, making sure to make it clear I understood it was their bosses making the mistake, not them themself.
		They agreed.
		Not everyone wants television service.
		I certainly don&apos;t.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="ride">
	<h2>A pleasant ride</h2>
	<p>
		I didn&apos;t want to bike back to Springfield just to have to bike back so soon for the $a[EUGLUG] meeting, so I tried to find a way to kill time in Eugene for a few hours.
		I tried working on coursework at the mall, but the security guard came and told me off.
		I&apos;m not sure what their problem was; it wasn&apos;t like I was bothering anyone.
		I guess if you&apos;re not there to buy something, they don&apos;t want you hanging out.
		So to pass the time, I instead explored the area a bit.
	</p>
	<p>
		I followed the bike path on the one side further than I&apos;ve ever gone before.
		I&apos;ve wondered what&apos;s down that way, but had never gotten around to checking.
		The only times I&apos;m over there, I&apos;m either heading somewhere or it&apos;s dark and I just want to go home.
		The path goes further than I&apos;d realised, and I didn&apos;t follow it all the way to the end.
		I found a nice, pleasant spot at a bridge, and stopped there for dinner before crossing.
		When I got to the other side, I found I was beyond the end of the path on the other side, and making my way back to the path, I found I&apos;d actually been incredibly close to reaching the end of that path countless times on my way to the $a[EUGLUG] meetings.
		If I&apos;d just gone a bit further, I&apos;d&apos;ve seen the end already.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Windows is still stuck on $a[NTFS], which while better than $a[FAT], is still somewhat horrible.
			It breaks at times, and even when working properly, it fragments pretty badly and requires periodic defragmentation.
			If you want to see advances in filesystems that are even somewhat recent, you&apos;ve got to look outside the Windows market to find them.
			Even $a[ext4], an old (though still widely used) filesystem used by Linux, outshines $a[NTFS] immensely.
		</p>
		<h3>$a[NILFS]2</h3>
		<p>
			One new advancement in Linux filesystems is the $[NILFS]2 filesystem.
			The support for this filesystem entered into the Linux kernel in 2009 (Jones, 2009), though the filesystem is still in active development.
			The most interesting aspect of this filesystem is that it writes data to the drive by basically appending to where the data last was written.
			In that way, it creates what is basically a circular log.
			This has a couple of interesting properties.
			First of all, if you&apos;re mostly writing data, not reading it, there&apos;s pretty much no seek time involved.
			The head is already right were it needs to be because it had just written to the block just before.
			Secondly, this makes going back to a previous version of the filesystem very simple.
			Older copies of files aren&apos;t deleted, at least not until space needs to be made.
			You can recover files you recently deleted or altered by mounting previous snapshots of the filesystem that exist because of the nature of how the files are stored on the drive.
			Additionally, in case of corruption due to power loss during a write, no data from the previous consistent state has been overwritten yet, so restoring the filesystem to a working state is incredibly easy and effective (Jones, 2009).
			From the way the article phrased it, it sounds like this is done automatically by the system, so the user doesn&apos;t even see an invalid disk state and need to deal with it.
			It&apos;s also worth noting that due to the circular way in which data is written to the drive, mediums that suffer from wear during writing (such as flash drives and $a[SSD]s) will be worn pretty evenly when using this filesystem.
			The down side is that garbage collection needs to be performed (Jones, 2009).
			The article didn&apos;t explain how that works, but I imagine that without the garbage collection, you&apos;d have to just overwrite old snapshots of the data which may be the only snapshots in which a file that is hardly ever edited is found in.
			I&apos;m guessing that the garbage collection copies those files to the head of the log or something as it deletes older snapshots.
		</p>
		<h3>$a[EXOFS]</h3>
		<p>
			$a[EXOFS] provides a traditional filesystem interface on top of an object storage back end (Jones, 2009).
			This makes migrating to an object storage back end easier, as you don&apos;t have to actually use it as an abject storage system.
			The hardware operates on blocks.
			Adding an object layer between seems like overhead, and doesn&apos;t get you out of using blocks in the back end for the back end.
			It sounds like this method allows the filesystem to be split up though, perhaps onto multiple drives.
			That would be advantageous.
			It also makes it easier to query the metadata (Jones, 2009).
		</p>
		<div class="APA_references">
			<h3>References:</h3>
			<p>
				Jones, M. T. (2009, October 31). <a href="https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-nilfs-exofs/">Next-generation Linux file systems: NiLFS(2) and exofs</a>. Retrieved from <code>https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-nilfs-exofs/</code>
			</p>
		</div>
	</blockquote>
</section>
END
);
